Farmers were well aware of the devastation that Chinese lanterns could cause
long before the inferno in Smethwick

They are the “silent killers” most of us have helped to launch. At weddings, birthdays, funerals and festivals, we have stood in our millions, open-mouthed, as a flickering flame floated high up into the night sky – or, on occasion, careered into next door’s conifers.

Chinese lanterns have become as common as aircraft across Britain’s night skies, with as many as eight million sold each year. But what is now clear is the havoc they can cause.

In Smethwick, near Birmingham, West Midlands firefighters are continuing to battle one of the biggest blazes they have seen. At its height on Monday, 200 firefighters attended the inferno, sparked by a single Chinese lantern that ignited 100,000 tons of plastic. Ten firefighters have been injured and four hospitalised. The scale of the damage is so far put at £6 million. Even yesterday, 20 per cent of the resources of the West Midlands Fire Service remained at the site.

The smoke – which rose 6,000ft and could be seen 30 miles away – has not yet cleared from the J&A Young recycling plant. But already fire chiefs are calling for an urgent review into the use of the lanterns. Tim Farron, president of the Liberal Democrats, says the lanterns (which are widely available, including from the Middleton’s Party Pieces website for £2.99) should now be treated as “incendiary devices”.

Their popularity means police forces and coastguards regularly deal with reports of them being mistaken for distress flares or even UFOs. According to national archives files released two weeks ago, the Ministry of Defence’s UFO unit was shut down in 2009 after it was inundated with complaints about lanterns. By November of that year, the UFO Desk had received 643 reports, treble the number of 2008.

But it is Britain’s farmers who have been bearing the brunt of the problem, with numerous reports of livestock being killed after eating the lanterns’ wire frames, which can take nine months to degrade. The National Farmers’ Union has long called for a ban on the “deadly” lanterns, which land in fields up to 20 miles from where they have been released. In parts of Wales, farmers have even had to mount patrols to prevent them falling on fields, old barns and buildings with thatched roofs. Glastonbury organiser Michael Eavis has banned them since 2011, after two cattle were killed at Worthy Farm.

“Sadly, it does take something of this scale in Smethwick to make people realise the lives that are being put at risk,” says farmer Huw Rowlands, whose prize cow, Sprite, a £1,000 pedigree Red Poll, was killed after eating the wire and paper remnants of a lantern in 2009. “How much more evidence do they need before putting a ban in place?”

Rowlands says lanterns frequently rain down on his farm in the Cheshire village of Mickle Trafford.

“After New Year, we had one landing in a heap of feed where the young animals were eating. We found it in time, but otherwise we would have had more deaths on our hands.”

It is 50 miles, as the lantern floats, to Heaton House Farm, on the edge of the Peak District. Here, too, these party pieces are loathed by farmers.

“They are silent killers,” says Mick Heath, 53-year-old owner of the farm where his family have kept livestock for six generations. The farm also acts as a wedding venue, and used to allow lanterns to be released, but banned them in 2009 when Heath realised the danger.

“We saw the results when some guests let them off,” he says. “The following morning, the lanterns’ remains were found about two fields away from the venue. Farmers around us were up in arms. They were bailing hay, these things were hidden inside the bales, and going straight into animals’ stomachs.”

Chinese lanterns, which rise after the candles inside fill them with hot air, were invented in the third century AD by Zhuge Liang, the chancellor of Shu Han, to be used as a military signal. They are thought to be the world’s first hot-air balloon. During the Yuan Dynasty, which began in the 13th century, they became a symbol of hope and good wishes.

In Britain, they exploded in popularity in 2009 and 2010. The rise is attributed to everything, from images of remembrance services of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami – where lanterns were lit in honour of the dead – to a 2010 TV advert of them being released across the countryside. The Maritime and Coastguard Agency reported 754 incidents thought to have been caused by sky lanterns in 2010, compared with 49 in 2008 and seven in 2007.

“It is something we have been aware of for a long time,” says Martha Lytton Cobbold, who owns Knebworth House with her husband, Henry. “At our open-air classical concerts, they became very popular. People would bring a picnic and decide to bring these lanterns as well. They are lovely but unmanageable.”

Now, even in the birthplace of the lanterns, people agree. China has deemed them a safety risk and fire hazard in the old quarters of Beijing and Shanghai. Spain has moved to ban their sale and use, and there are already restrictions in place in Germany, Austria, Australia, Malta and Vietnam, where they have been blamed for a number of forest fires.

Yet ministers in Britain seem less keen to act. A report published in May by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said lanterns were falling out of favour but concluded that an outright ban was not needed.

Those campaigning against their use say that making us aware that what goes up must come down is the only hope of bringing about a ban.

For firefighters hosing down the embers in Smethwick recycling plant and cattle farmers keeping one eye on the night sky, that time cannot come soon enough.